I Hear a Bird
by Daniel Lear
You’ve made it now, out of the low-middle class, all its striving
now nothing to us, see how we forget in lavender
lawns under the sweep of low willows? How is it to you, dear,
this dearly won salvation from the dimestore and the thrift?
Pass the salt in its crystal dish and do not
tip the candlesticks in their slim burning
while I lean careless on the delicate chair, and swig the wine like water
far far down to the dregs, contemplate the cellar yawning
cold beneath us, the dusted bottle racks, the yearning thick, distilled.
One day I said the vagabond life is good enough, but startled
by the sly slide of your eyes I understood the dark taboo,
and stumbled into your mute conviction
that more is always more but never quite enough.
Or were we more in the front seat sweated as ripe plums bruised
and ready for the tear of teeth? all that pure bleeding pure
as my breath in your mouth, a hot hardness against the snow of thighs,
the air scattered with static and a looped tape played.
My nails were bitten down
and all my jeans had holes. I hear a bird
trapped in spiny briars just at the moment you lean near
to slide your fine-pored hand across the linen, it comes to mine
like a well-fed snake into its burrow.
I imagine leaving:
None of these becomings more myself than here
unless straight upward is an option despite wingless.
Daniel Lear writes while attending nursing school and working (elsewhere) on an MFA. He describes himself as “a husband, a dad, a builder, and a farmer. Just the usual stuff.”
qarrtsiluni 